It really was a lovely night
by JAM3.14
Summary: Elaine thought she'd be stargazing alone that night, but an impossibly upbeat man decides to keep her company. Transcendence AU fic, featuring the previous incarnations of Dipper and Mabel, and how they meet. Rated T for minor language. Cross-posted on AO3.


**A/N: This was crossposted on AO3 by my AO3 alter-ego, GnomeWithALaptop. It is the Transcendence AU, but it primarily features the incarnations of Dipper and Mabel directly before they become the Dipper and Mabel we all know and love.**

 **My first contribution to the TAU, and it's how Dipper and Mabel (or at least, their previous incarnations) met. I have no earthly idea where I was going with this. It sort of just got spat out in two big chunks, but here it is. It's kinda fluff, but it's also kinda not. Without further ado, here it is. Please leave a review if you liked it!**

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 _Shreveport, LA_  
 _1959_

The Louisiana night air was cool, unusual for May, and fresh with the smell of thunderstorm. The wind tousled Elaine's nightgown, blowing the skirt against her legs, and the grass outside of St. Peter's wet her bare feet with dew. She probably shouldn't have been outside the building this late in the first place, but at her age, sometimes you had to be a little impulsive.

Halfway across the front lawn, she noticed the man who was following her. Elaine promptly decided she didn't care, and sat down on the still damp grass, only a slight grumble escaping her as the ground soaked through her skirt, wetting the backs of her thighs. She really was getting a little too old for this sort of thing.

She pulled her knees in close to her chest, wincing a little at the pain in her joints — damn arthritis — but there was no way in hell she'd sit with her legs splayed out in front of her. Her skirt had a habit of riding up along her knees when she did that, and she had no desire to show the entire world her thin cotton panties, thank you very much. After all, she still had _some_ dignity left.

And it really was a lovely night.

The man who had been following her plopped down next to her in an entirely undignified fashion. "Hey there!"

Now that he was closer, Elaine recognized him as one of her fellow 'inmates.' He was rather short, with small wisps of staticky white hair floating around his otherwise potato-bald head, and the skin around his eyes and mouth was creased from thousands of smiles. A maroon Christmas sweater, ugly and gnarled, had been hastily tied around his rather ample belly, pinning his faded blue pajama shirt to his stomach.

Elaine decided not to respond and pulled her knees closer to her chest, ignoring her protesting joints, and focused again on the sky. The stars were coming out, only just visible in the swiftly darkening dusk.

The man either did not notice or did not care about Elaine's silence, and he kept talking, to her rather subdued irritation. "I've seen you around the place a couple times! Never really pegged you as one for stargazing though. Too... I dunno... Respectable or something." His voice was creaky and boisterous as an old rusty gate, but there was an undeniable layer of hopefulness about it.

There was a long pause, and the man's face fell a little. But just as he made as if he was about to get up, she finally responded. "I've... always liked the stars." She glanced over to her companion and was rewarded by a bright grin flashed her way. Perhaps it was better to have a little company tonight. Especially tonight.

He settled back down onto the ground, playing with the fraying sleeves of his Christmas sweater, completely ignoring the wetness of the grass beneath him. "Yeah. I never really got into the whole astronomy part of it," he said. "But on a night like tonight? I kinda wish I did." The man swept a hand across the sky. "I mean? All this? It's one of those sights that make you feel small and big all at the same time, you know?"

Elaine smiled, slow but sure. "Yeah... I know." There was another long pause, then Elaine turned to the unknown man beside her, offering him a shaky hand to shake. "I'm Elaine, by the way."

The man's face lit up in a grin, crow's feet around his eyes deepening. "Brian."

"So..." Elaine started. "What are you in for, Brian?"

"Pfft. I dunno? I'm old? I'm tired of falling down the stairs? Jeez, lady, do I have to have a reason for being in an old person's home?"

Elaine laughed despite herself. "Nursing home."

"What's the difference?"

"'S'more polite."

Brian rolled his eyes, an easy smile replacing the grin. "Polite, shmolite. I'm ninety-five. If you wanted manners you should've called fifteen years ago."

More stars faded into view overhead. After another beat, Elaine tapped Brian on the shoulder. "You said you didn't know much about astronomy?"

A noncommittal shrug. Elaine took it. "I could point out a few stars for you, if you liked."

Brian flashed her another smile, this one bordering on a grin, and batted his eyelashes. "Anything for a pretty gal like you."

Elaine chose to ignore that last comment and shuffled closer. Stars but her knees were sore. She lifted an arm along his line of sight, their heads close together, and pointed to the first thing she saw. "That there's Jupiter. If we had a good telescope, we probably could see it's moons too." She shifted her gaze and moved her slightly shaky finger in a straight line to the left. "And the Big Dipper."

Beside her, Brian snorted. "Everybody knows the Big Dipper."

Elaine ignored him. "The four stars in the bowl there — see 'em? That's Merak and Dubhe on the end there."

She felt Brian's eyes following her finger. "And along the handle, there's Alioth and Mizar. Mizar's actually got a double star right next to her, but it's really faint, I can barely make it out without my glasses —"

Brian's face had that look of someone trying to remember something just off the tip of their tongue. "...Alnor, right? I heard something on the radio about a Mizar and an Alnor."

Elaine laughed a little. "Alcor, actually. But, yeah." She looked up at the sky again, and her smile faded a bit, something stirring in the pit of her stomach. She focused on the faint speck next to Mizar, feeling disconcerted, blinking hard as she tried to make it out. The night sky stared back at her, unimpressed. Elaine shook her head slightly. It was just a star. No different than any of the others. And she was going to catch a chill out here. Not that it would matter. But even so.

She brushed the grass from her hands off onto the skirt of her nightdress. "Here, help me up, would you? My knees don't like me sitting without a chair these days."

Brian stood up slowly and gripped her hand, letting her pull herself to her feet with a slight grunt, before they both started the slow trek back to the main building. Just outside the door, Elaine paused and glanced back up at the sky. "Thanks for sitting out here with me Brian. It's been a while since I got to tell anybody about the stars."

Brian grinned again. "Well I was happy to do it, Elaine." As she was about to go through the door, he grabbed her arm. "Say. I never actually asked you what you were doing out here."

Elaine gave him a half-hearted smile. "And I never asked _you_ why you were following me in the dead of night."

"Oh that's simple. You were a damn elephant in the hallway and I'm curious as a cat when it comes to loud noises in the middle of the night."

Elaine paused for a second. "...Was I really that loud?"

Brian laughed, and his arm dropped down to his side. "I'm surprised you didn't wake the Red Sox with all your banging around." Then he cocked his head curiously and looked her in the eye. "But really, Elaine. What _were_ you thinking of doing out here? It's the middle of the night. You couldn't have wanted to see me that badly."

Elaine's smile faded a bit until it was practically nonexistent. She glanced down at the ground, then back to Brian's face. "I just wanted to see the sky again one last time."

Brian's eyes widened. "Ah," he said after a beat. "That time then?"

Elaine gave him a feeble half nod. "I guess sometimes you just know."

He nodded, then gave her a smile that was slightly less bright. "Yeah, I know the feeling." He opened the door and started to walk back inside, but this time, it was Elaine who grabbed his arm and held him back.

"Hey, Brian?"

He paused, and looked back at her.

"Thanks for keeping me company." She knew her smile was a little brighter now, and Brian's grew a little bit because of it.

"Happy to do it."

And then they both left the warm, wet air behind them, and walked inside the nursing home together.

That night, Elaine Davidson died. It was a peaceful death, in her sleep. Not a lot of fanfare or theatrics. Her two children, who had had a falling out with Mrs. Davidson two decades previously, divvied up what was left of their inheritance quietly, then went their separate ways. Mr. Davidson was divorced and dead at this point, as were most of Elaine's siblings and friends, and so the funeral itself was a small and quiet affair. Elaine had asked to be cremated, and her ashes were put into a small urn, left in a closet, and promptly forgotten about.

Brian Oberland slipped on the stairs on the way up to his room, roughly ten minutes before Elaine passed. Hit his head, and that, as he used to say to his grandchildren, was that. The woman who found him the next morning, a Mrs. Dupont-James, ran in the opposite direction, fell, and broke her arm. After the fact, she swore up and down to her grandchildren, while struggling to keep a straight face, that Brian's corpse had come to life and chased her, causing her to fall. Her grandchildren, who were both in their mid-twenties, were not amused.

The other seniors in St. Peter's were slightly perturbed by both Mrs. Davidson and Mr. Oberland dying in the same night, but most quickly dismissed it as coincidence. The few that listened to Mrs. Dupont-James however, refused to walk up the newly dubbed 'Staircase of Hell' and spread rumors that the entire facility was haunted by Brian's ghost.

This was not the case.

Brian found her crying near her bed, huddled in the corner, and crouched down beside her. "Hey, Elaine."

She nearly jumped out of her skin, but ended up hovering ten inches above the floor with a slightly less miserable expression on her face, her nightgown fluttering slightly in a nonexistent breeze beneath her crossed legs.

Brian decided to go with it, and floated to a seated position beside her. "So," he began. "I suppose we're dead now. Funny, I never expected it to be a set of stairs."

Elaine rubbed her eyes furiously with a hand, and Brian's slightly forced smile slipped off his face. "Are you okay?" He finally asked.

Elaine gulped and gave her eyes one last angry scrub before she finally responded. "I'm dead. Of course I'm not okay. And... and this isn't how it's supposed to be," she said, twisting the skirt of her nightdress into knots. "Th-There's supposed to be big pearly gates and a g-golden staircase and—" here she broke off and buried her face in her hands, another sob escaping from between her fingers.

Brian hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder and was pleasantly surprised when it didn't pass through. "Elaine," he said. She didn't look at him, but he forged on ahead. "Maybe... maybe it isn't what you expected. It wasn't what I expected either. But that doesn't mean that you're a bad person, or... or that you somehow did something wrong."

Elaine slowly lowered her hands to her lap, and stared dully at the floor. "But if I was wrong about this," she said softly, her lip trembling slightly. "I could be wrong about _everything_. What if... What if everything I've ever known has been a _lie?"_

"Look, I don't have all the answers." Brian chuckled a little. "Hell, I don't have any. But we'll never know any of 'em if we don't move on. I mean, do you really want to spend all of eternity in an old person's home?"

Elaine's mouth quirked into a bit of a smile. "Nursing home." She gave her eyes another last furious scrub, then got to her feet and glanced down at him. "Do you feel it? That... that tugging right behind your stomach?"

Brian looked down at his pajama shirt and gave his belly an experimental poke. His finger went straight through it and out the other side just as he felt a nervous yank from just behind his navel. "Huh."

Elaine's smile grew a little bit, and she stuck her entire arm through her stomach and wiggled her fingers at him from the other side. "I'm guessing that's a yes." She pulled her arm out of her stomach, and offered him a hand. "Do you want to see where it leads?"

Brian looked at the proffered hand for a moment, then his eyes slid up to her face. He grinned at her and grabbed her hand, pulling himself up. "Together?"

She squeezed his hand and gave him a nervous smile. But when she next spoke, her voice was firm and unwavering. "Together," she said.

And together, they let the tugging sensation pull them into the unknown.

And together, forty years later, they came back. The one who used to be called Brian emerged first, screaming as loudly as her small lungs could manage — which was extremely loud. Her brother came five minutes afterwards. He wouldn't be born again for a long, long time.

 **A/N: Mrs. Dupont-James is someone we know and love, and if you can figure it out, you get major kudos. There's probably a sequel (prequel?) coming somewhere along down the line, but it won't get posted for a while, 'cause I've still gotta finish the last few chapters of MM &CF _plus_ Kid W/out a Shadow. Why oh _why_ do I feel the need to fill my plate with so many fics all at once?**


End file.
